On Wednesday, 19 December 2012 at 21:24:46 UTC, David Gileadi
wrote:
I had the same question, and Google found me a 2003 article
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03l.html
which in the wake of Columbia is largely about safety but also
about efficiency. Interestingly the article claims that the
shuttle flaws were largely the result of a) the desire to carry
large payloads along with astronauts (as Walter mentions) and
b) the choice of fuel, which led to several other expensive and
dangerous design choices.
As always the answer is never as simple as it seems (just as it
is with bytecode if I'm to attempt to stay on topic). One of
subgoals of the space shuttle was for it to be able to return not
just people back, but also to capture and return back to earth an
orbiting payload. It also carnied along instrumentation such as
the Canadarm, a very expensive device that you normally would not
want to throw away. The arm was used for deploying the payload
and also for performing repair work. It is hard to imagine a
throw away rocket booster approach meeting all of these design
goals, and I'm leaving out other abilities you cannot get from a
simple return capsule approach.
A mistake would be to use the shuttle for purposes that it was
not suitable for, such as situations that did not need its unique
abilities and could be done more cheaply.
--rt
